rslaback
Well-known member
I bought an old Ammco brake lathe from a guy while on a trip back in April. His dad had run a single man workwhenyouwanna auto shop and never really used them after he bought them new.
With the combining factors of new rotor prices creaping up, the local AutoValue charging $50 a rotor to turn them since their inhouse guy retired and me being a cheap ***, a brake lathe was on my wish list. I had already purchased am om car lathe but found it kind of a pain to set up at the right heights with an imperfect floor.
On day 2 of the trip the Facebook marketplace algorithm blessed me with an add for 2 brake lathes at $350 each. One was supposed to be for both drums and rotors and the other just rotors. Naturally I wanted to be able to do both so I bought that one. Unfortunately an opportunity to do more research would have resulted in me learning that the model 3000 that I bought was really just a drum machine. In some post purchase research I did find that the 3000 can be converted to a 4000 which is a drum and rotor machine. The gearboxes to run the cross feed however were quite expensive. It finally dawned on me one day that half the time I do a facing operation on a lathe I just manually feed the cross feed and I think I can do the same with this brake lathe. A really helpful Facebook page alerted me that the cross feed is limited by a nut on the end of the lead screw which can be removed and that it needed a longer guide bar. Some time on the mill got me that guide bar.
And then there was project creep. It leaked oil so I had to take the pulley off to get to the seal. But then I may as well clean up the parts I took off that were covered in grimy grease and old paint. Then it was hanging up a bit on the corroded spindle so more parts had to come off. And soon enough I had all the parts apart and media blasted and ready for new paint...
Now I just have to be brave enough to use it.
With the combining factors of new rotor prices creaping up, the local AutoValue charging $50 a rotor to turn them since their inhouse guy retired and me being a cheap ***, a brake lathe was on my wish list. I had already purchased am om car lathe but found it kind of a pain to set up at the right heights with an imperfect floor.
On day 2 of the trip the Facebook marketplace algorithm blessed me with an add for 2 brake lathes at $350 each. One was supposed to be for both drums and rotors and the other just rotors. Naturally I wanted to be able to do both so I bought that one. Unfortunately an opportunity to do more research would have resulted in me learning that the model 3000 that I bought was really just a drum machine. In some post purchase research I did find that the 3000 can be converted to a 4000 which is a drum and rotor machine. The gearboxes to run the cross feed however were quite expensive. It finally dawned on me one day that half the time I do a facing operation on a lathe I just manually feed the cross feed and I think I can do the same with this brake lathe. A really helpful Facebook page alerted me that the cross feed is limited by a nut on the end of the lead screw which can be removed and that it needed a longer guide bar. Some time on the mill got me that guide bar.
And then there was project creep. It leaked oil so I had to take the pulley off to get to the seal. But then I may as well clean up the parts I took off that were covered in grimy grease and old paint. Then it was hanging up a bit on the corroded spindle so more parts had to come off. And soon enough I had all the parts apart and media blasted and ready for new paint...
Now I just have to be brave enough to use it.